Our Work

Identifying key new users for the British Library

The British Library is the largest library in the UK with an extensive user base across the country. However, in the past ten years registered user numbers have declined and the team wanted to find out why this was happening.

Valuing Social Initiatives in the Energy Sector

Measuring the effect of the road network on communities

With an estimated 13.7 million people living near the Strategic Road Network (SRN), Highways England wished to develop a series of satisfaction metrics for those living near the SRN as a pre-cursor to measuring satisfaction levels nationwide over the course of a year.

Investigating the Impact of a Crisis on Corporate Reputation

Over the years we have been asked by a number of companies to explore how their handling of disruption has affected consumer perception of their brand and to evaluate to what extent their communications with customers were successful in providing timely information thereby minimising dissatisfaction.

Helping South Staffs Water to improve customer service and drive behavioural change

Water companies face a series of increasingly challenging targets against a backdrop of population growth, climate change and environment protection. Whilst many of these challenges will be addressed through the actions of the company there are a number of areas that require behavioural change from customers.

Analysing the relative importance of saving time for travellers

The Department for Transport wanted to determine consumer values of travel time savings and reliability – key policy tools for transport planners throughout the industry. The brief was for a very large and wide-ranging study which – in addition to car, rail, bus and other public transport modes – would also cover walking and cycling.

Developing a new metric to evaluate quality of life

Sheffield University wanted to develop a broad measure of quality of life for use in economic evaluations across health and social care (no such metric existed at the time). It was important that the new instrument would be able to capture the benefits of interventions as well as incorporating aspect of life that are important to care recipients and carers.

Evaluating the “need for speed” and its effect

Highways England is undertaking extensive work on the network including upgrading some of the most congested sections to smart motorways as well as conducting “business as usual” repairs and maintenance.

Exploring Perceptions and Usage of Smart Motorways

Highways England wanted to understand the impact of smart motorways on the driving experience and to probe their acceptance and appeal. (Smart motorways are typically 3 or 4 lane motorways with real-time signage to regulate traffic flow.)